Our time in the South was rushed, cramming in a lot into a short space, much like this post in fact.

Heading south from the Red Centre we covered many miles of nothingness. This was in fact the most barren section of the outback that we covered, with what limited vegetation there was standing less than knee high.

Gradually as we approached Coober Pedy we were greeted by loads of random high piles of dirt and ancient looking mining machinery scattered about the place. Coober Pedy claims to be Australia’s Opal capital, but I was surprised to learn that there were no big corporations here, but instead mere individuals and teams digging in random places looking for the precious stones. There are open mine shafts all over the place, all just waiting for that careless tourist to fall into them, along with the afore mentioned piles of mined out soil.

A fascinating place to look around (the Old Timers Mine was a particular highlight) but I wouldn’t want to live here. The surroundings are so desolate and unforgiving and there is a very rough feeling to the town, arising I guess from the manual labour workers attracted to the place and from the many different backgrounds from which they come. I read somewhere that right now there are 80 languages are represented by the permanent population of the town. The mining here all seems very random and inefficient, relying on luck more than anything else, and one can’t help but wonder how much of the precious opal is still out there hidden.

Before leaving town I was giving some thought to the dates for the flights for the remainder of the trip. I knew we needed to push back our flight from Sydney to New Zealand and for some reason I was convinced that current our flight was scheduled for September 8th. It was originally on the 28th of August but I was sure I’d already changed. I was however mistaken. Checking the tickets I realised that we’d missed our flight. Bugger.

I called Air New Zealand to check where we stood, only to find out that they’d cancelled all of the other Air New Zealand flights as we missed the first and that they were unable to reinstate them. STA travel weren’t much more of a help, saying that it was now in control of the airlines, and I should speak to Virgin. Nearest office? Not very close.

From the barren wasteland surrounding Coober Pedy, within half a day we staring into lush green pastoral land. If it wasn’t for the clear blue sky this could have been England. Not before crossing some impressive salt lakes though (which it turned out were used for some testing of some nasty American “devices”).

We took a quick stop in Adelaide, while searching for airline offices, which seems a nice city with lots of green open parkland. When leaving I managed to cover the entire Adelaide Grand Prix circuit (driving the parts on public roads and walking the start/finish paddock area) which reminded me not only of misspent youth playing Microprose Grand Prix 4 on the PC but also of the controversial Hill / Schumacher accident and for that matter Hakkinen’s crash that put him in a coma. Amazing how different it looks now and if it wasn’t for a few painted kerbs and painted track lines you wouldn’t even know it was there.

Leaving Adelaide we headed for the Great Ocean Drive, another highly acclaimed tourist route, and understandably so. This wonderfully twisty road covers over 150km of beautiful coastline with the added sights of the heavily eroded limestone cliffs which has given rise to some stunning rock formations.

We limped into Melbourne on the Saturday with the Van not running particularly well. Things were getting a bit rushed as we wanted to be in Sydney by Sunday or Monday at the latest meaning that our time here was going to be limited, or so we thought.

In the morning, after discovering the airline offices closed, we took a brief look around the city and went to see the lovely Albert Park, home to the current Australia F1 track. Of course being the motor sport nerd that I am how could I resist the opportunity to drive round it in my very own, erm, no expense spared track day weapon.

I could give Alonso a run for his money in this

Oh, and Niki, I think that puts me back in the lead for number of tracks driven. 🙂

Heading out of the centre towards the suburbs, the van just got worse and worse. What started off as an occasional misfire under load at low revs turned into regular misfires throughout the rev range along with loud and disturbing backfires. The van was coughing and spluttering, struggling to get up hills much to the annoyance of, well pretty much anyone in the vicinity. Not good at all…